Forced Prostitution

Traffickers and pimps often target people in vulnerable situations, which could include women and girls experiencing domestic violence. Sometimes, abusers will also prostitute their partners as an extension of the abuse the victims are already experiencing. Some victims of domestic violence may turn to prostitution to escape an abuser, but prostitution is often also used as a form of abuse.

Conversely, people in prostitution are often in situations that make them vulnerable to entering into domestic violence relationships. Lack of financial resources, steady housing, or lawful employment may give abusers leverage, power, and control over a person in prostitution. And if the abuser helps the prostituted person to leave prostitution, s/he may, in turn, come to feel that s/he is dependent on the abuser or owes it to the abuser to stay with him/her even though there is domestic violence taking place in the relationship.¹

¹ See Dorchen A. Leidholdt, Human Trafficking and Domestic Violence: A Primer for Judges, American Bar Association The Judges’ Journal, Vol. 52 No. 1 (2013)